Modest Improvements Seen on Med School Conflicts of Interest

More than 20 percent of medical schools showed improvement in the PharmFree Scorecard, released Tuesday for 2009, which judges medical schools on how well they prevent conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry. The project is run by the American Medical Student Association, which says that it sees plenty of room for improvement. Of the 149 medical schools in the United States, 9 received an A grade, 36 a B, 18 a C, 17 a D, and 35 an F. Other medical schools received an "in process" grade as policies are currently being reviewed. Two of this year's A grades -- Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Mayo Medical School -- improved from Ds a year ago.